So, lately I've been thinking about what Leica might be getting ready for Photokina 2012. The odds are it will be more than one camera, and one of them we know will be an EVIL compatible with M lenses, hence the name baby M. I've come up with some educated guesses/wishful thinking as to what features we might expect other than that. I started from a few basic premises and added a couple of assumptions, and these are interesting as well.
First and foremost is the sensor size. They have already stated it will be "at least APS-C", but just how big will it be? There are only 2 choices really, APS-C or half frame like the M8. I seriously doubt they will do a full frame sensor right from the start, although you never know. That's probably for the M12 :).
Since they already stated it will be backward-compatible with M lenses, I believe they will use a sensor the size of that of the M8. The 1.33 crop factor already discards quite a bit of the image area produced by the extraordinary Leica lenses, reducing the incentive both for lens owners to buy the baby M and for baby M owners to buy full frame M lenses. A 1.5 or 1.6 crop factor would probably defeat the purpose of making the mount M compatible, and this was clearly their conclusion as well in 2006 when the M8 came out. Nothing has changed since then as far the physics of crop factors. The change in FOV is significant as well. It's all fine for telephotos, but the Leica strength lies in standard and wide angle primes which are second to none. It would be wasteful to not capitalize on that strength. The downside to APS-C is that the widest FOV with the widest Leica lens, the 18mm, is only a 27mm equivalent. The 21mm Elmarit would only be a 32mm. If you want to go below 27mm, you have to look to Voigtlander for lenses. Hardly in Leica's own interest.
I do expect that they will introduce a new electronic M mount and a few lenses for it. It's the only practical way to do AF, and a compact entirely MF EVIL camera is a non starter for the masses. This new mount will read the 6-bit codes off M lenses, it will have electronic contacts and it will probably also read off the focus distance of M lenses via a sensor where the M's have the rangefinder roller arm. This is far out of my area of expertise but I believe they will do it because focus distance information might be useful for flash exposures and vignetting/corner color shift compensation. Of course the baby M will have a built in flash! The new electronic M lenses will likely not be backward compatible with rangefinder M's, at least not optically, owing to them being optimized for the half frame APS-H sensor. I think it would be wise to keep them at least mechanically compatible, in view of a future FF EVIL with dedicated lenses. These lenses will probably be slightly lower performance than FF M lenses, and they will probably be a standard zoom, a tele zoom and maybe a macro to start with.
The second premise is that Leica is a small company, with relatively little experience and engineering capability as far as the sensor and associated hardware goes. They will probably team up with an outside supplier to develop the new sensor (Panasonic?). They will probably switch to CMOS, as afaik CCD doesn't work with contrast detection AF. This leads me to believe the baby M will have live view and it will do movies. As a lot of work will have do be done to make the sensor work with the short flange distance of the M lenses, it is quite likely that the new technology will be applied to the M10. Again, history would lead credibility to this idea: Kodak supplied the sensors for both the M8 and the M9, they had the same pixel spacing and probably used very similar microlens technology in both. These facts together lead toward an interesting possibility: the full frame M10 will use a very similar sensor technology and same pixel spacing. The M8 and M9 did, and if this holds true for the baby M and M10, we can hazard some guesses as to what resolution they will have. I consider it unlikely that Leica will introduce a new upmarket camera with 10 megapixels. I personally wouldn't need any more but from a strictly marketing point of view, it would be a disadvantage. A lot of people will look at the $2500-$3500 baby M next to the $1300 24MP NEX 7 and balk, not thinking the problem through. At the same time I doubt Leica will join the megapixel race and I think they have already hinted that they have no intention of doing so. I commend them for it. My best guess will be from 12 to 15 megapixels. Since the ratio for the M8/M9 is 10:19 Megapixels, (FF vs half-frame really) this would mean that the M 10 will likely have from 23 to 28 megapixels. It would be a good size step forward from the M9, and the system would not be diffraction limited until roughly f11, still higher than or close to the optimum aperture of most Leica M lenses. At the same time it will keep a comfortable distance from the S2. Another really interesting question is, since the sensor will be capable of it, will they give live view and movie mode to the M10? These could be game changing differences in the rangefinder world, so I think they will. At least, I hope so.
Another question is, will they add in-body image stabilization to the baby M? It would make sense. It's the only way to add stabilization to legacy M lenses, and the technology is proven to be effective. This would not stop them from adding optical stabilization in-lens to the baby M telephoto lenses I mentioned above. At the same time, as Leica makes only fairly fast primes, and even very fast wide angles, they would not have that much to gain from including it. On this one is hard to guess what they're up to, but I would like to see it included.
So to review, here's what I think Photokina 2012 will bring:
- a baby M with an APS-H sensor, electronic M mount backward compatible with M lenses,
- EVF
- new electronic M lenses for the crop sensor,
- OIS in some of the new lenses,
- live view and movie mode,
- built in flash,
- in body image stabilization, at least for the 6-bit M lenses.
- 12-15 Megapixels
- hopefully the same battery as the M9, for those pro's who want a baby M as a backup/video body.
- an M10 with 23-28 Megapixels with a sensor based on the same technology, and hopefully, if Leica is listening, A HIGHER MAGNIFICATION VIEWFINDER, PLEASE!!!!!
Photokina 2012 can't come fast enough.....
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